


John Watson Finds One Reason Not to Throw Away the Superglue

by SiriuslyPeeved



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Humor, Johnlock Fluff, M/M, Pre-Reichenbach, Pre-Relationship, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2013-10-15
Packaged: 2017-12-29 12:22:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1005413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SiriuslyPeeved/pseuds/SiriuslyPeeved
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John gets glued to a sink. Pre-slash Johnlock if you squint, implied Mystrade. Rated T for language and mild innuendo.  Valentine's parody/fluff for the Reviews Lounge Too's Green Room event, 2013. (originally on FFN)</p>
            </blockquote>





	John Watson Finds One Reason Not to Throw Away the Superglue

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [the revolution starts everywhere](https://archiveofourown.org/works/347564) by [sheffiesharpe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheffiesharpe/pseuds/sheffiesharpe). 



Laden with carrier bags, John struggled upstairs. A cacophony of double bowing erupted through the kitchen door. “Some help would be nice here… Sherlock!”

Eyes closed and raven curls attractively tousled, his barking mad flatmate stood with one foot perched on the ledge of the open sitting room window, sawing away at “Bad Romance” on the violin.

John nudged the carrier bags with his foot.  “C’mon, help me put away all this gelato.  You were dying for it an hour ago when I left, and now it’s melting.”

Sherlock tucked the violin under his chin and gave him the patented Sherlock Holmes Pitying Glare toward Lesser Mortals #105, meaning “ _You know I can’t possibly be interrupted when I’m playing Lady Gaga.”_

John could just barely make out female giggling from the alley below.   Good God, there were the fangirls again.  Mrs. Hudson would be having kittens. 

“If you’d just put some more clothes on, you wouldn’t have such an audience.”

Sherlock paused to hitch up his cherry-red pants (very festively decorated with little white hearts, tornadoes, and a slavering Tasmanian Devil) before continuing to the chorus.  The pants were an appropriate choice as it was Valentine’s Day, but John was a little miffed that Sherlock had stolen them right out of John’s dresser.

“Is it too hot in here to wear clothes?” persisted John.

Sherlock finished the song with a flourish.  “Rhetorical questions are boring.”  A resounding crash in the alley signaled yet another love-struck middle-aged mum fainting dead away and knocking over Mrs. Hudson’s bins.   Sherlock clucked as he tucked the priceless Stradivarius away in its case. “I just hope they haven’t interfered with my experiment this time.”

John didn’t want to know.  Perhaps he needed a cuppa before tackling the half-melted gelato on the kitchen floor.  He gathered the empty electric kettle from the sideboard and reached for the tap.  His palm stuck fast, along with the cuff of his favorite oatmeal-colored jumper.  “What the hell?  Sherlock!”

Swanning in from the sitting room, still clad only in the red Tasmanian Devil pants, Sherlock pulled a lab stool up beside the sink and scrutinized his flatmate’s reactions.  “Pulse accelerated… Face flushed… Ears a rather appealing shade of magenta… I’d put it at a Pantone TPX 17-2036.”  Up close, Sherlock had basil stuck in his teeth from the takeaway pad thai they had eaten for lunch. Hot, garlicky breath wafted in his face.  John winced.  Sherlock sniffed like a bloodhound.  “Perspiration odor sharp.  Clearly a stress reaction.”

“Of course I’m stressed, you nutter!  I’m glued to the bloody kitchen tap!  Now get me off!” roared John.

Sherlock huffed a laugh.  “Well, this evening’s turning in a fresh and exciting direction…”

“For Christ’s sake, Sherlock, that is _not_ what I meant.”  John motioned violently toward the cabinets with his head. “Get the vegetable oil.”  Sherlock dug around in the cabinets and emerged with a bottle of artisanal olive oil Greg and Mycroft had brought back from Spain.  “You can’t use that!  That bottle had to be a hundred quid.  What about the regular frying oil?”

Sherlock demurred.  John had to stop and think whether he had ever seen anything approaching guilt on his friend’s face before.  “Ah… the case of the fry cook murders.  I needed to test some theories.”

“Is _that_ what you did with those hands Molly gave you last week?”

“The process was fascinating, John.”

John groaned.  He’d come home early that afternoon, hoping to talk Sherlock into watching a movie and getting pizza afterward, but the flat had smelled so divine when he arrived, John had dragged him to their favorite chip shop instead.  “So _that’s_ why you wouldn’t eat the fish and chips.”

“Brilliant, my dear Dr. Watson.”  Sherlock pulled a poorly sealed plastic tub out from under the sink.  Murky oil oozed from under the lid.  “This should be sterile enough. It did cook at a very high temperature…”

“Just try the olive oil already!” barked Captain Watson.

Sherlock massaged the oil into the sides of John’s glued palm.  Fifteen minutes later, they’d gotten nowhere, except that their hands smelled very strongly of high-quality olive oil.

“We’ll have to do some research.  John, my phone.”  Sherlock snapped his long, aristocratic fingers.

“You have to be kidding me.”

“Right.  No pockets.”  John swatted at Sherlock with his free hand. “I’ll pop down and see Mrs. H. She’s surely got some different types of cooking oil we can try.”

“Dressing gown!”  John yelled after him, but Sherlock was too deep in the section of his mind palace devoted to removing cyanoacrylic adhesive to listen to him.

Bare footsteps moved lightly down the stairs.  John heard the knock at Mrs. Hudson’s door and her little shriek of laughter.

“Oh, my dear boy, you don’t want to be running around like that!”

The Valentine pants were a little loose on Sherlock’s toned waist.  He hitched up the waistband with one oily hand, leaving a clear greenish smudge on the buttermilk skin of his waist.  Garlic breath and all, Sherlock smelled like a delectable tapas platter.  John’s stomach growled.

Sherlock and Mrs. Hudson lounged comfortably at the table, perusing household tips sites on John’s laptop while John stood hunched over the sink, a captive audience for their quasi-filial banter.

“Acetone!” Sherlock burst out.  He kissed Mrs. Hudson’s cheek and pelted downstairs to their landlady’s apartment.

“My, that did take him a little longer than usual.  I suppose he’s distracted by Valentine’s Day and all, the poor darling.”

John chuckled. “That’s rich.  Just this morning, Sherlock declared his intention to blackmail Mycroft into pulling some strings and banning the stupid holiday altogether.  Except for chocolates in heart-shaped boxes, they’re allowed to exist.”

Mrs. Hudson sighed.

Sherlock unstuck his flatmate with a liberal application of acetone nail varnish remover.  The fumes burned John’s eyes and throat, making him cough. John stretched backward, releasing the tightness between each of his vertebrae.

“Maybe I shouldn’t ask, but how in the hell did that tap get coated in superglue in the first place?”

Sherlock wouldn’t look at him.  “I was making you something.”

“For Valentine’s Day?”

Sherlock’s earlobes glowed the nicest shade of bubble-gum pink. John had no clue, and frankly did not care what the Pantone number would have been.

“Well… It could be… The cards in the shop weren’t just for lovers, they were for friends too.”

“You berk,” said John affectionately.  “Let’s see it, then.”

Sherlock disappeared upstairs for a few minutes.  John was afraid he’d spooked his flatmate into a sulk, but in short order the taller man returned with a haphazardly wrapped parcel. He stood fidgeting while John fumbled with the wrapping paper, his fingers wretchedly dried out by the nail varnish remover.

John wasn’t sure whether the gift were something a primary school boy would make for his Dad on Father’s Day, or whether it belonged in a contemporary art museum, surrounded by long and involved critiques and explanations.  A toy revolver was the base, (John felt quite fortunate it wasn't his _real_ revolver) topped by cut parts from a stethoscope.  In the nest of stethoscope tubing (wound around with oatmeal-colored yarn) rested a teacup.  John sat and held the object in his hands for a few minutes, turning it back and forth.

“Wow, Sherlock.  Thanks for… thinking of me, mate.  I can’t believe you made this.”

“I wanted you to have something you could take to work with you and keep on your desk.  Something from me.”

John was unexpectedly touched.  He reached out and clapped Sherlock on the dressing-gowned shoulder.  The younger man startled.

“I’m sorry I don’t have anything for you.  I didn’t realize we were… doing this.”

Sherlock darted away as if he’d been slapped.  John felt his stomach— or maybe it was his heart—plunge about thirty feet straight down.  Luckily, Sherlock was only gone for a few minutes.

“Mayonnaise,” said Sherlock.  He pulled out a thankfully nearly-new jar from the refrigerator and plopped some into a bowl on the coffee table.  “Soak your hands. It’s the best way to replenish the skin after washing your hands in acetone.”

“How did you…”

Sherlock’s eyes gleamed like galvanized metal rubbish bins illuminated by the flashing azure lights of a Met police car.  “The Internet is a beautiful invention.”

“You know, I have to agree with you there.”

“Happy Valentine’s Day, John.”

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Sherlock.”

**Author's Note:**

> Challenge piece for The Reviews Lounge, Too Green Room event, 2013. Written pre-series 3.
> 
> I've got a remix of this piece to post eventually, but the fluff monster reigns there as well. (Heh) I'm glad so many people have gotten a kick out of this little tale!


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